Running head: LIT REVIEW 1 1

Teaching Text Structure: Examining the Affordances of Children’s Informational Texts

Literature Review by Eric Aegerter

National University

TED690 (Daniel Weintraub)

7 February 2019
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Abstract

In this study, entitled Teaching Text Structure: Examining the Affordances of Children’s

Informational Texts, authors Cindy D. Jones and Sarah K. Clark of Utah State University, in

collaboration with D. Ray Reutzel of the Univeristy of Wyoming, delve into the uses of

informational texts in elementary school. The trio states that there are three shortcomings of

informational texts that may or may not outweigh their many exceptionalities for teaching text

structure. In doing this research, the authors define the term affordance, name the five

informational text structures, and tell how they conducted this study by creating a coding

scheme.
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This article takes a stance on informational texts and their uses in the elementary

classroom by teachers who are instructing their students on text structure. The authors state that

there are many benefits to using informational texts to for this purpose. It was written that the

ELA Common Core State Standards “accentuate the use of informational texts in elementary

schools to better prepare students to meet the challenges of the ‘staggering amount of

information today’” (Jones, Clark, & Reutzel, 2016, p. 143). Yet, the authors maintain that

informational texts have certain shortcomings that cannot be ignored.

The authors list their three issues with informational text after a few pages of reading.

The first of which is “childrens’ informational texts were noted to switch from one

organizational pattern to another within a single section of text incorporating several different

structures” (Jones et. al, p. 145). The authors present this issue, of course, because children may

become easily confused with no sense of direction, or a complex direction, in informational

writing, particularly when they are low readers. The second issue presented by the authors was

that “an abundance of informational texts were written using a description text structure” and

that “as early as 1965, Niles reported that the majority of informational texts written for

secondary-school students used a description text structure” (Jones et al, p. 145). The problem

with this has to do with variety. Students did not have access to a wide variety of text structures,

they were simply too many texts that were using the description structure rather than one of the

other four that the authors later mention. Finally, the third issue the authors have with

informational texts is that “informational texts written for elementary and secondary students

often lacked informational text features and lcue words that serve as explicit signals to aid

readers in recognizing text structure” (Jones et. all, p. 146). In other words, informational texts

were not clear enough in their structure to be useful in elementary instruction.

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The authors identify the main five text structures that go with informational literature as

well as the seven necessary text features. The five structures are as follows: description,

sequence, problem/solution, cause/effect, and compare/contrast (Jones et. al, p. 148). The text

features of an informational text, are title, table of contents, headings, introduction or preview

statement, paragraphs/sentences, conclusion or summary statement, and graphical features

(photographs, illustrations, diagrams, charts, etc.)” (Jones et. al, p. 149). The authors narrowed

down a list of sample texts to 223 that represented true informational text, according to their

definition, and checked to see what percentage of texts fell under a certain category, what

percentage of texts used more than one text structure, and how many text structures, of the seven,

that texts had on average. The study found that the percentage of informational text structures to

be highly disproportionate. Of the five structures, description structure reigned supreme in the

category of most common at 54%, whereas cause and effect structure was last on the list with 0%

(Jones et. al, p. 151). The authors then found that most texts contained the seven text features,

but many of them did not, some included only one or two text features.

The importance of this information is that our students are not being given enough of

what they need. The standards are explicit in stating that “elementary teachers are encouraged to

teach informal text structure using exemplary model texts that use a clear, explicitly marked,

single-structure text organization” (Jones et. al, 153). Yet, the vast majority of texts being used

employ multiple textual structures, and this is in sharp contrast to what the standards clearly tell

us should be taught.
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References

Jones, C., Clark, S., and Reutzel R. (2016). Teaching text structure: examining the affordances of

children’s informational texts. Elementary school journal, vol. 117 (1).

doi/pdfplus/10.1086/687812.